Creating a painting, five steps that never let me down!

" You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint paradise, then in you go."

• Nikos Kazantzakis

My whole life I've enjoyed painting and drawing so it only made sense that my first post here on Steemit would be about nothing else. I have experimented with all kinds of different mediums like watercolor, acrylics, gouache, charcoal, pencil and for the past ten years of my life, oils.
I must confess that the freedom and joy I feel when painting in oils is unlike any other and from I started exploring the amazing world of oil paint it's become my sweet number one. One of the biggest benefits I found working with oils is the lifetime of the paint. By this I mean how long the paint stays wet and movable. This is however just one quality out of many as oil paint can be used in as many different ways as there are people painting with it.

Through my studies I've been thought by various artist and have had the great opportunity to get many different approaches on how to use oil paint. Some people have a very quick process called " alla prima" where you paint wet on wet, others prefer to let each layer of previous paint dry before applying the next. No matter what the technique, it's been educational and helped me realize what works best for me and my own process.

This post is written just as much for myself as for anyone who enjoys the world and process of artistic expressions! Below I talk about five stages I go through more or less every time I make a painting. The same "recipe" is also applicable in portraiture or still life painting.

Stage 1 - the big proportions

In the first stage I always start by sketching out the big proportions on the canvas. Here I simply work with line and roughly estimate the distances and sizes of information that I'm portraying. In the example above the first important thing to decide is the horizon line, the size and place of the mountain coming in on the right, the bigger cloud formations and some points in the lower section to show me where the water meets the sand etc. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of just the lines before I started laying in the sky, but I think it still shows the idea.
The main reasons I only work in big lines in this initial stage is because of the freedom it gives me to move and change the information. By building the information in the painting from bigger to smaller it gives you the one benefit of never having to move a large area of paint, it gives you something constant to relate to with all the details.

Stage 2- massing in the big areas of value

In the second stage it's all about starting to make the big impression work. After all, if the big impression, meaning all the big values and relationships between them, doesn't work, it doesn't really matter about that one little cloud you painted so perfectly. No one is gonna pay attention to that anyways is all they can think about is how that sea looks way to dark and grey compared to that way too yellow sand. In this stage it is more about just massing in the values, meaning just laying in the big areas of color next to each other and making them work. This is one of the stages I've struggled with the most in my time as a painter. Knowing the impact of color and values and how they play off each other becomes pretty evident in this early stage and often takes some practice. One thing that can be helpful in this stage is introducing your lightest light and darkest dark. That way you have something constant to relate to the other values and makes it more likely that you don't end up with a bunch of values too light or too dark.

Stage 3- breaking up the big areas

In this third stage it's all about starting to break up the bigger areas of value into smaller shapes, but still keeping it simple! In the third stage it is often easy to get a bit to eager and start to model the living day light out of areas that still doesn't work with the big impression. This is also the stage that presents the biggest changes in the painting, so be patient. This is the stage that I find the most enjoyable. It is when it all starts coming together without having the make it or break it feeling that final details bring.

Stage 4 - time to start turning the form

In the forth stage it is time to start bringing in those details and turning the form! In this stage I do like to work wet on wet which means that compared to before when I am jumping around the whole canvas I start to select areas that I work on one at the time. For example in the picture above I painted one session on the sky, then one on the rocks then one on the mountain. Painting wet on wet makes it easier to work with subtle value shifts and model the form.

Stage 5- finishing up!

In stage five its all about finishing up. That means finally introducing those little details on top of all the previous work to give it that extra punch and finesse!
And that's it!
By the way, sometimes you do realize that you want to make certain changes in the last stages which means re painting a bigger area. This happened to me during this painting. I wanted the values in the mountain to be darker, as well as the sand in the foreground.
It does happen that we change our mind along the way and that is of course ok.
This is just one way out of many to approach a painting and the way that I am the most comfortable with. One of the reasons why I prefer this way of painting is the control it gives me of the process and the paint. It is also a method that is harmonies whit my style of painting, classical realism, though I do think it could be applied in many art forms.

If you have any questions or thoughts about my process or about oil painting give me a shout! Talking about art always brings me joy!